Eric Ries’ ‘The
lean startup’ is a brave attempt at bringing entrepreneurship to a scientific
level. Did he succeed? Hell, no. The ‘methodology’ proposed in his book is nothing
close to scientific, it is more an abstraction of the things he learned as (a consultant of)
entrepreneur. Nevertheless, he learned a great deal of valuable insights, and
shares it without restriction in this incredibly rich book.
Concepts
like ‘validated learning’, ‘minimal viable product (MVP)’, ‘pivot moments’ and
the ‘5 why’s’ will definitely linger on in my thoughts about business strategy.
But perhaps the strongest learning for me was the concept of ‘long batch’
versus ‘short batch’.
I’ve had a
traditional economic education, where I was taught that splitting workflows in
small pieces, each performed by specialized people (the long batch), is the
most efficient way to produce a product. According to Ries’ experience, it is
not. At least not for everyone.
I’ve made a
quick attempt to put his arguments in a chart:
Thing is,
if you obtain experience from selling a product (or service) early on in the process, even
with an imperfect product (MVP), you quickly obtain insights (validated
learning) on what the market exactly want, and can adapt your product instantly
to it. It’s easier said than done, since this requires many specialized teams
to collaborate –each with their own agenda- but it is definitely more efficient
since you can take corrective measures earlier on compared to the long-batch.
Furthermore,
your resources –especially human resources- will be working on these products
all of their time (instead of waiting for measurement feedback or bottlenecks
to be resolved). In that way, the short-batch concept would potentially unleash
the innovation capabilities in each of these resources, since ‘if we stop
wasting people’s time, what would they do with it?’ (E. Ries).
A capital
question…
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